Category archives: Philosophy of science

Closer to the truth (5):  Reconstructing ‘the scientific method’

Closer to the truth (5): Reconstructing ‘the scientific method’

EpistemologyPhilosophy of science

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

I shall end this series on the problem of verisimilitude by sketching the main methodological norms that can be derived from our favorite definition of “empirical truthlikeness” –remember: the verisimilitude of a hypothesis H on the light of the empirical data E, or Vs(H,E ), would be equivalent to p(H,E)/p(HvE). Remember as well that by […]

Closer to the truth (3):  Verisimilitude, seeming, and simulation.

Closer to the truth (3): Verisimilitude, seeming, and simulation.

EpistemologyPhilosophy of science

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

For the problem of scientific realism, the most consequential implication of the ‘ugly duckling theorem’ we met in our last entry was that judgments of similarity seem to be not reducible to any kind of algorithmic definition that might tell in an objective way how much ‘similar’ is one thing to another, for these judgments […]

Inferentialism, a new system of logic that could boost critical thinking and AI

Inferentialism, a new system of logic that could boost critical thinking and AI

Computer scienceLinguisticsPhilosophy of science

By Invited Researcher

Author: Alexander V. Gheorghiu, Research Fellow in Logic or Applied Logic, University College London The rigid structures of language we once clung to with certainty are cracking. Take gender, nationality or religion: these concepts no longer sit comfortably in the stiff linguistic boxes of the last century. Simultaneously, the rise of AI presses upon us […]

Misunderstanding idealization, truth, and understanding (1)

Misunderstanding idealization, truth, and understanding (1)

Philosophy of science

By Jesús Zamora Bonilla

Angela Potochnik’s Idealization and the Aims of Science is probably one of the most interesting and ambitious philosophy of science books of the last years. It offers a picture of scientific knowledge and of its production that elaborates on, and wisely amends, some of the best literature in the recent ‘pragmatist’ tradition of philosophy of […]